Retailers of goods and services may typically offer such goods and services for purchase via one or more conventional brick-and-mortar retail outlets. Such retail outlets may include any number of point-of-sale systems via which customers purchase items selected while shopping according to a so-called “checkout” process. Some such point-of-sale systems are operated by employees of the retail enterprise, while others are so-called “self-checkout” point-of-sale systems at which customers scan their selected items for purchase, autonomously control payment for the selected items and perhaps bag their purchased items.
Bulk item price scanners are commercially available which are capable of determining, substantially simultaneously, prices for multiple items grouped together on a conveyance unit. Such bulk item or multiple-item price scanners therefore have the potential to achieve significantly increased item throughput in point-of-sale systems as compared with conventional item scanners. Item conveyance and handling systems can be designed to take advantage of the increased item throughput made possible with such multiple-item price scanners to concommitantly increase the volume of customers that can be processed though point-of-sale systems at any one time and/or decrease the processing time of customers through point-of-sale systems.